Michelle Lopez and Ester Partegàs: STEADY

Ballroom Marfa is pleased to present the new exhibition STEADY, on view beginning April 17, 2024, with opening celebrations on Saturday, April 20 from 5–8pm. The exhibition brings sculptures by Michelle Lopez and Ester Partegàs together for the first time.

The word “steady” implies a continuous state of becoming balanced, developed, and supported. The act of steadying requires a physical, structural, and conceptual interdependence. In this two-person exhibition, Lopez and Partegàs’s precarious, playful, and powerful works harness physical and material components—even using the ground below and the air above. Instead of separation and assertion, there is a counterbalance. 

Perhaps what you see is not what you see, disrupting the popular principle of Minimalism. With the works on view, there are cues for us to look within—as seen in Lopez’s “hyper-rope” sculptures—and behind or far underneath into the subconscious, as seen in Partegàs’s tunnels. How we understand the world around us cannot always be seen; sexuality, gender, and race, for example, are embodied. Forms of violence are not always visible, as we’ve come to know in patriarchal, supremacist, technological systems that have caused harm. 

The works in STEADY make us question how the world is built, and why. The exhibited works offer a broader reflection on the balance of power through form, as it extends into the world at large. How we think about spatiality and materiality, is also how we know how to inhabit, hold, share, and gather in space. 

STEADY is organized by Daisy Nam, former Ballroom Marfa Executive Director and Curator, with Sarah Melendez, Programs Director and Music Curator. The exhibition will travel to the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts.